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Jerusalem Flakes

The streets were windy.

Dark.

Grey and overbearing.

Little slits carved into limestone to accommodate passerby.

Endless tunnels, where people lived over the street.

Never walking in a straight line for more a few steps.

This was home. Safe. Familiar.

Where you had to worry about getting stabbed if you walked one block too far.

Where endless tourists jostled you as a mere non playable character in their adventure through an ancient city.

The walls were so unbelievably close. A ring around the mind.

It’s just you, the streets, and the word of God.

And half the streets were off limits because there were women there.

God hates women.

It was a known fact.

The walls didn’t keep the enemy out. They kept you in.

There was no greenery to speak of.

 Anytime a tree died, a new one was not planted in it is place.

Because the rabbis. Because religion. Because God hates trees.

Just grey, grey, grey.

The sunlight couldn’t hit your bedroom winder because you were too close to the wall of the neighbor’s house.

 So close you could almost touch it. Oh wait, you could actually touch it.

A place where neighbors windows opened to your own courtyard.

Where the neighbors crying baby woke you up at night.

Where four schools released themselves on to the streets to play recess games below your window.

You can hide, but you cannot seek.

His idea of adventure was walking around the galityza rooftops, where you could peer down through the grates into the bustling market below. As close to danger as was comfortable.

Those grates weren’t always there. There were added after some Jewish terrorist dropped some grenades down there. The hero we need.

You know who was cool? The kids two grades above. They dangled from the side buildings, with just their fist around the railing keeping them from falling three stories. This is how they proved their bravery.

Also fighting with Arabs. Always with the fighting with Arabs.

By the time his grade rolled around, the teachers had tamed them.

They only had one legendary fight with Arabs. He missed it, he had pneumonia that day.

Teachers taken away in handcuffs.

Classmates identified days later by police detectives because of their distinctive red hair, arrested, and then released at the behest of Charedi politicians.

Fighting for freedom never felt so claustrophobic.

The camera zooms out. The entire city, with its ramparts, battlements and church spires, contained in a bowl.

The bowl is on a table in a bar.

He adds a copious amount of whipped cream on top.

Who eats whipped cream in a bar? He does.

He adds a cherry on top. The kind you can never get in Israel. Big, juicy, like the the spies would have brought back from the land of milk and honey. Two men to a peach, the legend went. Those sizes hadn’t been seen since. Everything was tiny now.

King David’s on the right, talking about Titties and Beer. King Solomon on the left, taking notes. This is good shit, might be a topic for a new book.

He shovels a spoon in, and takes a bite.

If God Were a Medication, He Wouldn’t Get FDA Approval

A key Aish tactic in proving God’s existence, was emphasizing the unusual. 

There is no nation as oppressed as the Jews. 

No other nation claims public revelation.

No other book can spell the word Pizza or Hitler with this unique arrangement of letters.

This tactic is a huge part of the discovery seminar, and the idea is that this thing is so unique that it must absolutely be true. 

There is a fundamental flaw to this way of thinking, that flies in the way of the scientific method. 

And before you go and dismiss the scientific method as irrelevant here, let me remind you that you owe every single part of the life you live to it. The fact that you didn’t die in your childhood. The fact that you drove to the airport and then got on a plane to visit your grandmother who is somehow still alive even though she had polio and got both hips replaced. The computer you used, the electricity it’s plugged into, the teeth that are still in your head. 

You owe it all to the scientific method. 

When it comes to something as significant as religion, which aims to dictate every part of your day – what you do, think, and feel, it behooves you to apply the same processes as you expect from your car and medication manufacturer. 

Learning Through Repeat Observation

So what is the scientific method?

I myself didn’t fully understand it until I took a course in statistics, which, by the way, I think is a basic course which should be required for any individual who is being prepared to “think independently”. 

And before your eyes glaze over and you skip this section because you claim you’re “bad at math”, let me reassure you that there is no math required to understand basic statistical principles. THere, now you really have no excuse. 

Here’s how basic stats work: we assume that everything is the exact same as everything else. That’s the starting point. Nothing is special, a brick could just as easily cure cancer as any other drug, and a boat could fly just as easily as a plane. 

Ah, but now you’re claiming that some things are not like other things? That some oils are essential, others not? That some people are smarter than other people? That doing X will lead to Y? You need to establish this as true by testing your hypothesis and proving that the difference is significant. 

How do we test? We observe, we measure our results, and see if one thing is significantly different than the other thing. 

What makes something significant? That’s what statistics are all about. Some things are very significant. Other things, slightly. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what part is significant because there are a few factors going on. That’s where stats get complicated, and can also be manipulated.

But the basics of it all, is we start with everything being considered equal, in stats this is called the null hypothesis, and this is always the default. So much so, that in any experiment we run, we are simply trying to reject the null hypothesis, or fail to do so. 

It’s fascinating to note that within the scientific method, even when you reject the null hypothesis, it’s always there, lurking in the corner. Your new conclusion never becomes the new null, the new status quo. “Everything is the same” is the baseline for everything, and this entitles anyone, at any time, to start running more tests to prove that gravity is really a thing. 

There is no such thing as tradition, or “that’s just the way it’s done here”, within the method itself. (Of course, many people applying this are flawed, and have their own biases. There are procedures that try to correct for this, but more importantly, the idea as a whole is bigger than its anomalies, as can be seen by the number of planes that fly and diseases we are regular curing)

So in a nutshell, the way we know anything at all within the framework of science, which is the framework in which we live every part of our tangible life, is by actively examining our reality for significant patterns. And even when we find patterns that seem significant, we still remain open to the idea that actually what we thought was significant, is not. 

Anomalies Are Useless

With all this said, we can re-examine the original claim, that something is so unique, that it must be true. 

When measuring anything scientifically, the things that is most hated is data that is an outlier. These just throw the rest of our data off, and are often deliberately discarded when we’re trying to identify patterns of significance. 

There is no one event that would ever cause the scientific community to adopt a new principle, because any phenomenon must be observed repeatedly before we can name it as significant. You could cure cancer in front of our very eyes using a special potion from a magical bottle, and we’d still dismiss your claims if you are unable to cure multiple people with potions from multiple bottles. 

This is the process that every medication you consume is put through – we compare people who don’t take it (by taking a placebo instead) with the people who do, and look for significance between the two as far as the medication having an impact.

Which brings us to the title of this post – if you were trying to prove that God exists because of a few, unrelated anomalies, mind bogglingly amazing though they might be, it would never fly. This cure-all medication that you’re selling, that will result in guidance in this world and eternal bliss in the next, would never hit the shelf. 

The only way you’d be able to prove God existed is if there was a phenomena that you could measure over and over again, and find significance. For example, that praying in a certain specified manner increased people’s chances of getting healed. Unfortunately, all we’ve found is that it actually makes people worse. 

The often cited claim that “even scientists can’t explain X”, which somehow proves that something is true, is a complete fallacy. There are loads of things that scientists can’t explain. Most things, in fact.The miracle is the thing they can explain, those are the only things we can do anything with. (Moreover, it’s worth noting that explaining things and observing them are two separate things – we can far more easily prove a correlation than explain a causation)

Keep Logic Out of It

Now of course, is the time for apologetics to step up and say that God is something that defies norms, defies rules, and cannot be measured by such triflings as science. I have no reply to that – if you choose to absolve God of the same rigor you use when deciding whether buying lottery tickets is smart or flying in a plane is safe, you do you. 

But don’t bring science back into things only when it serves you.

Don’t point to scientists who are religious.

Don’t explain to me that Torah Codes are unique in a statistically significant way, as you spend so much time doing in your seminars (deliberately dropping complicated terms so you sound smart and bypass most people’s ability to question you).

Don’t bring in physicists to explain how when the bible says six days it really means to say 13.7 billion years. 

You can live in a hermetically sealed bubble of delusion if that’s what tickles your pickle, but don’t you dare pick and choose. Because if God was a medication, you’d be dead by now. 

Ba’al Teshuva, or: “Mental Health Issues”

I have alluded to this before in other scathing posts, but it’s becoming more and more clear to me, to the point that I almost see it as synonymous.

People generally become religious because they have a fucked up past, and the more religious they become, the more their past was fucked.

Here’s my definition of a Ba’al Teshuva: (noun) someone who tries to escape their emotional problems by subscribing to a completely different, dogmatic world view, with little success.

They attempt to find peace by confining themselves to a smaller slice of life. One that is supposed to be safe and provide meaning and purpose.

In reality though, all they are doing is bringing their unresolved baggage with them, into a reality that often makes it worse, with inflexible thinking and hard-line stances.

In turn, like a heirloom watch, they often pass their shit on to the next generation.

Here’s my definition of a Ba’al Teshuva: (noun) someone who tries to escape their emotional problems by subscribing to a completely different, dogmatic world view, with little success.

When I hear Ba’al Teshuva these days, I instantly make many assumptions.

I assume inflexible, dogmatic thinking.

I assume a lack of emotional intelligence.

I assume physical or emotional violence.

I assume changing opinions over the years, having subjected their children to childhoods that they never had themselves, in environments they now “no longer agree with”.

I assume too many children who weren’t parented well and had a shit time at school.

I assume unstable marriages that ended in divorce, or should have (after years of pretending to have a great relationship and dispensing relationship advice freely so that others become religious).

Show me a Ba’al Teshuva and I will show you a troubled soul sailing a turbulent ocean, with emptiness in his bowels and misery in his wake.

To be clear, I’m not talking about soccer moms who grew up reform or conservative, went on a JWRP trip and came back all inspired so they now light shabbat candles. That’s not a ba’al teshuva (yes, you can add gatekeeping to my many sins).

A ba’al teshuva is someone who radically adopts an entire new way of living, stringently follows Jewish law, and makes life choices they would never have made in their previous life.

Choices like moving to a shitty part of the country to live in a shitty neighborhood, having more children than would be prudent, having less money, trying hard (and often failing) to fit in to the people around him, and listening to Jewish laws and Rabbis instead of their own values and intuitions.

There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. And I’m sure you will point to them when trying to dispute my claim. But I’ll stick to my guns and say, they are the exception, not the rule; the fact that you need to cherry pick examples should be proof enough.

I’m sure, too, that critics will respond in reverse: with tales of shitty experiences from the non-religious world. To which I’ll concur. The world is full of shit and I, for one, am not a fan. But show me another demographic where these issues are this pervasive. Show me a society that tries as hard to pretend to be normal, well-adjusted, and enlightened while actually sweeping this much shit under the rug.

If you are a ba’al teshuva who is emotionally stable, you aren’t.

Just kidding, maybe you are.

Good for you.

If you know a ba’al teshuva who is emotionally stable, awesome, let’s nominate them to the Healthy Ba’al Teshuva of the Year Award.

Maybe my assumptions are all wrong.

Maybe it was only I who got shafted by God’s legendary dildo.

But a look at the many smoking craters that are former Aish families, the amount of divorces and misery that lie right beneath the surface, indicates that we might just have a pattern on our hands.

A letter to my father

I sense a continuous state of judgment and disapproval from you towards me and my siblings, for not “doing what’s right”, not “thinking critically”, and not “using our own judgment”. We are “following the masses” and “doing what’s easy and convenient”.

I find this accusation absurd in light of what we’ve been through. For 35 years you continuously disregarded mounds of “evidence”, “proof” that your children were suffering, that we so clearly were in the wrong place.

You did so to a large degree because of the advice you got from others, because that was the norm around you, because that was what was easy and convenient. The shittiest school also happened to be across the street.

How much of your own judgment did you need to suspend to send your kids to a school where children were hit daily?

You attempted to intervene: “Please only hit other kids, not my kids,” you asked the teachers. How absurd a request is that? And consider all the times those interventions failed, due to your lack of awareness, your lack of intervention, or their disregard for your ‘weak American sensibilities’.

These are the Kalim Sh’badmai: shisim, rimin, uzradim, bnos shuach, bnos shikma, and novlos hatmarah; I have no idea what those plants are, and neither do most commentators. But the school you sent me to valued knowing these names off by heart to a much greater degree than, say, not beating up your classmates every recess.

Schools that valued fear over smiling, who expelled students for asking questions, whose biggest wish was to go back to living in the dark ages when things were good.

Schools who thought it acceptable to take a student and appoint them a teacher because it was time for them to get a job.

Schools whose idea of educational pedagogy was built around consultations with sexual predators, 2,000-year-old mishnaic statements, and the opinions of rabbis long dead.

To me, the only way you could have perpetuated this is by completely shutting down your own sense of judgment, of what is intuitively right and wrong.

To blindly follow the masses who “reassured you” that you were making the right moves.

To consult Rabbis who were part of the problem, instead of your own heart and mind.

To stay in the same neighborhood for 35 years even as it turned into a festering cesspool of the dredges of society.

To be too tired to move your kid to yet another school because the ones you defaulted to were fucking shitshows.

To do the minimal effort needed when it came to researching the best options and environments for your children.

That, to me, is seeking comfort over truth.

To accuse us of lack of judgment, of comfort-seeking, of following our emotions, is the ultimate hypocrisy.

And whereas our own “wrong” choices affect only ourselves, yours resulted in over 200 years of collective suffering across nine highly gifted and talented children who wandered through over 30 institutions during their teenage years alone in search of a place to rest, one that would accept them, remotely, for who they were.

If any of us had rejected religion after just one month at any of those schools, schools which you vouched for in your actions as accurately representing a compassionate God and His light-unto-the-nations people, Dayenu. That would have been justified. One month surrounded by fear, dogma, and stifled personalities would have justified walking away and never looking back.

But we each tried it for over 10 years.

I will gladly burn in hell unwillingly for all eternity than willingly bow even once more to the God that you have shown me, directly or through your “independently chosen” emissaries.

And if that God that I have seen is not the God that you know, this supposed God of love and happiness and meaning that has somehow passed me by, well, you had 20 years of independent thinking to convey that to me.

You had your chance to make your case.

Now let us be.

50 Shades of Gadlus

50 shades of gadlus

Hear me out.

You know how Song of Songs, that legendary work of erotic poetry by the wisest of all men, is not actually at all erotic poetry? It’s actually a metaphor for God’s love for the Jewish people? It’s actually the holiest book ever, by virtue of the old Rabbinical switcheroo?

A must for any budding Rabbi!

Well, I posit that not just that book, but all works of erotica, are similarly holy books. Books that can guide us in understanding the nuances of our spiritual connection with God, whose relationship with us, of course, is like a patriarchal man to his wife.

I think that, following existing tradition, eight-year-old kids in cheder should stand in the street corners on Chol Hamoed Pesach, and, once done reading about Solomon’s affinities for breasts and necks, follow up with a few choice chapters from 50 Shades of Grey.

Because, as we all know, that book is just a metaphor for finding joy in life’s pain, and it offers a step by step progression for finding greater devotion and obedience to the one we love, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, Blessed Be He (and what strong ankle muscles he has (Exodus 24:10)).

Heck, once we’re done with that, we should move on to some gay erotica as well, because sometimes Am Yisrael is compared to a man (actually, they almost always are, until it’s convenient to make them a woman for Shir Hashirim purposes).

The dinosaur is a metaphor for the Yetzer Harah, since it is a reptile like the snake in the Genesis story.

Heck, I bet we even have what to learn from velociraptor smut. Because if Hashem put it into the world, that’s proof enough that there is what to learn from it.

Shloimie’s Shtark Shiurim

Is your yiras shomayim growing thin? Is your inspiration waining? Are you certain you’re doing something wrong but not sure what?

Shlomie’s Shtark Shiurim provide you with the chizuk you need to get through day, one inspirationally deflating message at a time. Learn about what’s causing all the calamaities around the world, and what you’re doing wrong to fix them.

This may look like a single video, but just like hakadosh boruch who can be everywhere at once, so to a single video can actually contain 5 videos of inspiration as a playlist.

Prepare to Meet Your Macher

He’s a macher.

He can get you into seminary and out jail with a well placed phone call.

He can bring you back into the fold or get you excommunicated for life with a flick of his flip phone.

He’s a macher.

He carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, and of three different cellphones, beepers and hatzalah walkie talkies on his belt; all seamlessly connected to the Bluetooth headset permanently lodged in one ear.

His every step jingles with power and the keys of a thousand institutions hanging off his belt.

A macher of the most effective kind.

His shoes are almost as shiny as his slicked hair, thin peyos curved behind his ears or curled thinly beside his head (depending on his denomination).

There are two kinds of machers.

Those who drop names and those who drop dollars.

He’s either made his money in real estate, mortgages, or assisted living, or he knows all the people who have.

You achieve the same results either way.

Machers have distinct names.

The rest of the world suffices with Yankel and Yossi.

Machers need better brand recognition.

If he’s the well connected type, he’ll go for a distinct name that’s easy to drop, like Easy or Yotzkekele or Leibish Tinklelkeit.

If he’s of the filthy rich variety, sometimes a distinct last name is all he needs – Goldfaber. Mendelstein. Itzkalach. The world has just one Pitzel, and anyone who knows him therefore automatically does so on a first name basis.

The world revolves around chesed, and as a macher, he’s committed to doing it around the clock. The favors he’s done are too numerous to count, but who’s counting anyway? Of course, we all know that for that one time he put in that word for you, you basically owe him for life.

A macher must have his finger on the pulse. He needs to know who is happening to what, and which rabbi said when about whom. Prophecy is no longer a thing, but damn it if he’s not the next best thing. He basically knows everything that’s happening, as it’s happening. From the other end of town.

He’s like a walking lashon harah dispenser, but fortunately it’s all letoeles. Chas vesholim he should gossip for gossip’s sake (but if people only knew what’s really going on in the back of Kishke Levinsthark’s white Lincoln it would make their hair stand on end).

Being a macher is a thankless job, but luckily it has its perks (which we can’t mention here because they are insignificant and beside the point). I can’t even begin to tell you the amount of times he’s saved Zaltzman’s ass, and could you be believe what he did last motzei shabbos? I’m just saying, if he was in this for the money, he’d be in real estate.

How do you become a macher? You don’t, you’re born one.

You’re either a macher in a long line of machers going back all the way to Moshe Rabeinu, patron saint of all machers. Or you’re born into a simple, uninfluential family and claw your way to the top with raw, unfiltered ambition.

You hone your craft through the circle of life. Yeshiva, weddings, levayas. You’re helping orphans, fighting autopsies, expanding eruvs. You’re a staunch Republican, unless it’s better to be a Democrat, in which case of course you are.

You are beloved by all, even the schvartze mail carrier who you always invite in for some cholent and schnaps on Shabbos morning. But let no one cross you, or they’ll feel the full wrath of Gdolei Hador and congressmen at your disposal.

So let’s raise a glass of bourbon to our local macher, without whom the world would cease to rotate around its unrestricted access, and it would be much harder to bask in the glow of the Gadol Hador’s son.

Our Father in Heaven

Our father in heaven they say
The father of mercy
But as an almighty being
He hath chosen to live quite far away

Maybe he has better things to deal with
Bigger celestial fish to fry
He is nonetheless absent
Far enough to not hear us cry

He admonishes us in his mercy
Sending messages our way
It’s the positive reinforcement
That’s more lacking day to day

When our real life fathers go to heaven
We mourn their absence and their loss
He’s our father in heaven
But heaven is no place for a father

Seven Years

One of the most important days to me, far more than my birthday, is the day I left religion.

This is the day, to borrow from fundamentalist religion, that I was born again.

For many people it’s a gradual process, but for me there was a day in mid-august 2015 when I made the decision to drop it all at once and walk away.

Fueled by anger at the sudden ending of a painful relationship, my transition was actually too abrupt, and years later I had to go back and process parts of it in a more mature way.

And so, this post is a reflection on the last seven years.

Seven fucking years.

It’s a very holy number, ask any Jew.

Looking back

Every year, I feel the impact of time and the processes I have undertaken on my ex-religious journey, and this year is no exception.

Here’s what’s helped: Therapy.

What types of therapy? Trauma-informed therapy from an ex-religious therapist who became very acquainted with my entire family. Somatic experiencing. Hypnosis. EFT (tapping). Some EMDR.

Also: coaching, meditation, psychedelics, ecstatic dance, educating myself. About childhood trauma, ADHD, OCD, bible criticism, the origins of man.

Time.

Crying.

More crying.

So much crying.

I have processed endless amounts of pain from my upbringing: society, school, parents, siblings, life experiences. In the form of shame, guilt, anxiety, sadness, and more.

It gets better

I’m hear to tell you, especially if you’re recently out of religion, that it gets better.

I no longer twitch and froth at the mouth at the mention of religion.

I am able to have good memories from my past.

I can indulge in certain practices that are not inherently bad to me, like Jewish songs or Shabbat meals. I avoided these in the past because they reminded me of everything else.

I am better with people, feeling more like I’m part of society and not a weird foreigner.

More miraculously, I am better with romantic relationships, able to navigate the complex world of dating and sexuality with more nuance and understanding. There’s hope yet!

My story is not as big a part of me as it used to be, which is a very good thing. It used to be that everyone with a pulse heard about me being an ex-Orthodox rabbi within the first 3 seconds of us meeting. Now I wait a few minutes before dumping on them.

The pain of my past has lessened, to the point where it’s more anecdotal data and not an emotion fueled re-living of the experience. This is an important milestone in trauma healing.

Forgiving

Most recently, a new theme has emerged, which I am hugely surprised by, and take as a very positive sign: forgiveness.

Damn this one is hard, because to forgive, you’re forced to drop any defense mechanism that might be protecting you from your own pain.

Plus, sloppy forgiveness smacks of the shittiest parts of Judaism and Christianity. Of emotional bypassing and suppressing hurt. Of Instagram flavored spirituality.

But when done right, with honesty and processing, it can be the final frontier of moving on.

Of really checking if you’re over something.

Of not letting other people’s weaknesses, mistakes or flaws to continue to live within you.

Holding on to anger or resentment (my go-to moves) is perfectly understandable. At the same time, it creates a bond with my shitty past and prevents me from moving on. It gives more weight and substance to entities that don’t deserve the light of day.

I’m not here to tell you to get over yourself, like so many people told me online. “It’s the past, move on, why are you still angry?”. Fuck them, you can be angry for as long as you want. What was done to you deserves lifetimes of anger. It deserves setting fire to entire buildings.

But. For your own wellbeing, not for anyone else’s convenience, I invite you to check in occasionally and see where you stand relative to forgiveness. It’s a good milestone to check in for, the ultimate goal in healing, I would say.

And by the way, forgiving someone does not mean having a relationship with them, or condoling them in any way. Fuck those fuckers, you are way too good for them. Forgiveness is for you. By all means, keep fighting the fight, keep maintaining the distance, whatever you need that is best for you.

The End

You’re welcome.

I don’t have a dramatic way to end this article. Healing has been a far more subtle gradient of growth than my abrupt leaving of religion was. If only we could snap our fingers and be cured.

Jesus style.

It takes far more effort to build than to break. And to me religion has deeply entrenched systems that are dedicated to breaking you. So if you feel broken, it makes sense. It couldn’t have been any other way – you were born into it, and their collective brute force was far greater than you even realize.

You’re allowed. Give yourself time.

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